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$25 Gun Created With Cheap 3D Printer Fires Nine Shots (Video)

The Lulz Liberator, a working handgun printed on a $1,725 LulzBot 3D printer with $25 in plastic. Click to enlarge. (Credit: Michael Guslick)

When high tech gunsmith group Defense Distributed test-fired the world’s first fully 3D-printed firearm earlier this month, some critics dismissed the demonstration as expensive and impractical, arguing it could only be done with a high-end industrial 3D printer and that the plastic weapon wouldn’t last more than a single shot. Now a couple of hobbyists have proven them wrong on both counts.

One evening late last week, a Wisconsin engineer who calls himself “Joe” test-fired a new version of that handgun printed on a $1,725 Lulzbot A0-101 consumer-grade 3D printer, far cheaper than the one used by Defense Distributed. Joe, who asked that I not reveal his full name, loaded the weapon with .380 caliber rounds and fired it nine times, using a string to pull its trigger for safety.

Joe’s proof-of-concept could raise the stakes another notch in the growing controversy over 3D printed guns, an idea that threatens to circumvent gun control and let anyone download and create a lethal weapon in their garage as easily as they download and print a Word document. The first successfully fired 3D-printed gun that Defense Distributed revealed to Forbes earlier this month, dubbed the Liberator, was printed on an $8,000 secondhand Stratasys Dimension SST printer, a refrigerator-sized industrial machine. In testing, that prototype has generally only been fired once per printed barrel. The gun printed by Joe, which he’s nicknamed the “Lulz Liberator,” was printed over 48 hours with just $25 of plastic on a desktop machine affordable to many consumers, and was fired far more times. “People think this takes an $8,000 machine and that it blows up on the first shot. I want to dispel that,” says Joe. “This does work, and I want that to be known.”

Eight of Joe’s test-fires were performed using a single barrel before swapping it out for a new one on the ninth. After all those shots, the weapon’s main components remained intact–even the spiraled rifling inside of the barrel’s bore. “The only reason we stopped firing is because the sun went down,” he says.

Just how the Lulz Liberator survived those explosions isn’t exactly clear. Joe claims that the plastic he used, the generic Polylac PA-747 ABS fed into most consumer 3D printers, is actually stronger than the more expensive ABS plastic used in a Stratasys printer. In fact, before using a Lulzbot-printed barrel, he and Guslick tested one made on Guslick’s Stratasys printer. That barrel exploded on firing, though Joe blames the problem in part on its having been printed with a smaller chamber, the space at the back of the barrel into which the round is inserted.

Joe’s printed gun contains a few more pieces of metal hardware than the original Liberator. Rather than print plastic pins to hold the hammer in the body, for instance, he used hardware store screws. Like Defense Distributed’s gun, the Lulz Liberator also uses a metal nail for a firing pin, and includes a chunk of non-functional steel designed to make it detectable with a metal detector so that it complies with the Undetectable Firearms Act. The rifling that Joe added to the barrel is designed to skirt the National Firearms Act, which regulates improvised weapons and those with smooth-bored barrels.

Still, Joe’s cheap homemade gun isn’t without its bugs. Over the course of its test firing, Joe and Guslick say it misfired several times, and some of its screws and its firing pin had to be replaced. After each firing, the ammo cartridges expanded enough that they had to be pounded out with a hammer. “Other than that, it’s pretty much confirming that yes, Defense Distributed is correct that this functions,” says Guslick. “And it’s possible to make one on a much lower cost printer.”

When Defense Distributed founder and anarchist Cody Wilson set out to create the world’s first 3D-printed gun last year, he told me at the time that his focus was on making guns as widely accessible as possible via the Internet, a move he believed would demonstrate governments’ inability to control digital objects. He planned to eventually adapt his model to be printable on a sub-$1,000 printer known as a RepRap. “Anywhere there’s a computer and an Internet connection, there would be the promise of a gun,” Wilson said at the time.

Joe’s experiment brings that idea of a universally-available gun with uncensorable online blueprints one step closer to reality. “I’m trying to do the same thing Cody wants to do. I’m not an anarchist, but I don’t like the idea that the government is telling us ‘You can’t have that,’” he says. “I agree with Cody’s idea that this is a perfect fusion of the first and second amendments.”

Of course, there’s a certain thrill of pioneering a new gun design, too, Joe admits. “I may be the first person in the history of mankind to fire a bullet through a plastic rifled barrel. It’s an interesting feeling,” he says. “I feel like Samuel Colt.”

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I call Bullchit, one had a broken trigger (lower picture), kinda tough to shoot with NO TRIGGER and the other one the maker has so little confidence in the safety of shooting it he has use a stand and string to fire it!! This is all Anti-Gun BS to hype the LibTard Troops.

No–it’s not sad at all Libertyinfinite. Though anarchy may result in chaos, chaos is not a certain result. On the other hand, the state ALWAYS results in violence. The state, by definition, is a lawful monopoly on violence and it violates the non-aggression principle.

I’m not so much an anarchist as I am someone who believes in the non-aggression principle, and the NAP precludes having rulers and a state (though rules are still possible under the NAP).

What is sad is your handle here–”Libertyinfinite.” It misrepresents you!

“Anarchy” is just another word authoritarian statists want you to fear. Anarchy is merely total lack of government control or force. Other synonyms for anarchy are “freedom” and “liberty”. Surely, it would be such a chilling and dreadful thing if people didn’t need the state. We’d all go all Hobbesian, right? Prove it.

I’d argue that government and authoritarian control has taken far more lives. Just look at the number of lives taken by wars, religious persecution, genocide and nuclear bombs. All problems caused by government.

you say that like anyone really has constitutional rights anymore. freedom of speech has been overridden by “terrorist threat” right to bear arms? Not in this state pal! bring on the anarchy I say. our entire government is antiquated and it just plain doesn’t work. even chaos would be better than this. at least a hell of a lot more like freedom!

This is a new terrorist’s toy but distracts from the main event, which is Obama’s assault on the 2nd Amendment. Millions of tax paying citizens without felony records or mental problems are being abused by new regulations, fees and taxes designed to reduce gun ownership or at least create a registry. It’s a socialist experiment that is obviously anti-American, and the reason gun & ammo sales are through the roof. Citizens should never trust government with their rights and the lack of trust created by Obama and his cronies is astonishing. These new laws will make felons out of ordinary citizens who refuse to play along.

The ethics and consequences of 3D printing i.e. who owns the designs; what if the designs come from another country; fake 3D parts? etc. are the tip of the iceberg. This cat is out of the bag and the rules of engagement are nowhere in sight. Generally, this does not make for a happy ending. For more on 3D printing check out: http://chopra-m.blogspot.com/2013/03/ready-set3d-print.html

Why isn’t everyone screaming to ban this technology! This is exactly what’s wrong in this country, allowing anyone with the capability to make guns at home! Don’t think for a minute that the scum bag criminals aren’t going to jump on this like a dog on a bone. Stop this now before it’s too late!